Ingrained
She will take a bus to work,
it will trundle through her mind
an old bus, long recycled into
washing machines and utensils.
All the spare parts of her mind
ride that bus and arrive together
at an old factory gate.
She smells viscose oil and
a ghostly dereliction,
yet the armored ranks of machinery
thunder and hiss
inside a grey vault of over-printed silence.
Hands twitch in her lap,
they know where to go, remember
what to do. The machines whine and spin
as her dream body tends.
The foreman glares
through the oily interface between
his thoughts and hers.
The boss is a mustache in a suit
that undresses her greasy overalls.
Eyes nailed to her work,
she labors on.
This evening,
she reaches out for the mechanical cat,
it has batteries
for its ticking heart and voice.
Smalltalk wanders around her room
as she listens to her elderly brain
opening long boxed-up days.
Strands of memory
struggle to delineate the sequences
between then and now.
The cat purrs on, its feline vocals
throb and sometimes rattle
like the engine
of a work-bus returning home.
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